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WOTH: Platinum #29 – Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture

Sometimes, you just need to take a break from the frantic and fast-paced games that flood the current market. After shooting aliens/robots/other humans in the face, or racing at 200 miles an hour with dirty dubstep music in the background, you tend to get exhausted of it all. Maybe you just need to take a slow, meditative walk…

And The Chinese Room (the company behind Dear Esther) have delivered yet another answer for this feeling, with the incredibly poignant first person adventure walker Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. This time, you find yourself alone, overlooking a beautiful English countryside at sunrise, next to a small road, leading towards the quaint county village of Yaughton. Straight away, you’re overcome with deep orchestral music as you take it all in. As you make your way to the town and beyond, you find the whole place completely deserted – only a few odd balls of light, zipping around with seeming personality, are there to guide you along the path.

While following these entities, tied to certain intriguing members of the county, you will encounter “light-signatures” – recorded conversations and pivotal moments of the townsfolk represented by casts of light. It’s an incredibly smart way to learn about the various fates of all the people in the county, and why they’re no longer around – especially since the concept of light plays such a big part here.

The event that encapsulated the town initially appears to have very strong religious ties, until you begin to dig deeper, learning a bit more from each major character’s thread, finding out the true nature behind the mass disappearance.

The dialogue and voice acting you uncover is some of the best I’ve ever heard in a video game. Even if you can’t differentiate these “light-signatures” by appearance, the characters sound so utterly real in their discussions with each other. They each have distinct personalities, and you soon care very much about their fates – which makes for very emotional reveals as you progress. To make matters even more emotional, the haunting choir-inspired soundtrack by Jessica Curry cranks the feelings up to 11. Each time you reveal a pivotal moment in a character’s story, the orchestral music swells and envelops you. I can’t help but still listen to the soundtrack, even long after I’ve finished the game.

This is one of the very rare games which has affected me long after finishing, and I simply need to keep listening to the soundtrack. It now sits alongside Journey and To The Moon for that experience.

For these reasons, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is an experience you cannot miss out on. You need to go into it blind – do not read up on it, or look at any guides. Only do so after the first playthrough. For like-minded platinum trophy hunters, it won’t take long after this – maybe 5 hours.

If you have any recommendations similar to this game, I’d love to know what they are!